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Wednesday, December 28th
December Travel Tips
 Tune in here to discover the answers to the November 25 contest. In response to one reader’s comment, “What are you looking for?” I’m really not searching for anything, in particular. While driving from university gig to another, I visited several places that I’ve not had the chance to visit before, mostly because I flew over them. Driving seems extra-exciting when you can stop en route to discover places that you’ve only ever dreamed of visiting. When I drove out west last October, it was my first visit to states like Colorado and Utah since high school. I planned to visit Art| Basel| Miami Beach, but I never imagined how rewarding this could be, since I typically avoid art fairs. Needless to say, this art fair and all of its predator activities further stirs up an already espresso-charged Miami. Where else can you check out art from 9am-3pm, relax on the beach for a few hours, and then return for more art and parties until 2am? A surprise interview in Ghent, Belgium, enabled me to stopover in NYC to experience Richard Tuttle’s amazing Whitney retrospective and to explore Smithson’s Spiral Hill/Broken Circle (1971) in Emmen, Holland. My yearlong Smithson trail, initiated by my visit last January to Asphalt Rundown near Rome, is officially finished.
Sue Spaid on 12.28.05 @ 10:18 AM EST [more..]
Monday, December 26th
THE GAME OF ART FOR 2006
It is the Holiday Season again and "The times they are a changing", Bob Dylan said it quite appropriately. Art has become a game and the players are bigger than ever. An Art Elite definitely exists. Entrepreneurs and business men like the Rizzos of Barnes and Noble have inherited the boards of institutions from the old wealthy who played the art game for tax breaks and to become Art Patrons to those few artistes who knew how to play the game. New actions are required for an artist to make it today. The number of artists has grown by leaps and bounds. Artists who do not understand their craft find it difficult to discern what is good art and what is not because they are not being taught reverence for art and craft as the old masters did. They do not apprentice in the studios of master artists or seek the right teachers. They put raw pencil to paper and think that is enough. And why not? They are being told that a childlike drawing by a drugged out Basqiuat has great value. Talent is not a necessary to be a successful artist in the world today.
Hyacinthe Baron on 12.26.05 @ 09:09 AM EST [more..]
Friday, December 23rd
HATSHEPSUT
She was what you might call, "a woman with balls." Almost literally.
That's just one of the conclusions observers may draw from "Hatshepsut: From
Queen to Pharaoh," the colossal exhibition now showing at the deYoung Museum
in San Francisco.
Hatshepsut (Hat-shep-soot) was an Egyptian queen who was also the
step-mother and aunt (that's a whole other story) of future Pharaoh
Tuthmosis III. The exhibition teaches that she married her half-brother
Tuthmosis II, who had Tuthmosis III with another woman before he and
Hatshepsut "hooked up" and ruled together.
The exhibition portrays Hatshepsut as an ambitious woman. When Tuthmosis II
died, he appointed his son heir to the throne, however, "Little T" was too
young and Hatshepsut ruled with him until she "officially" declared herself,
"Pharaoh." Certainly a ballsy move not without controversy given the lack
of precedent and the constant jockeying for power amongst the power hungry.
Michael Corbin on 12.23.05 @ 09:31 AM EST [more..]
Monday, December 19th
Is there an ‘art mafia’?
For artists trying to get their work shown, it often seems like there’s a group of ‘insiders’, whose work is always being shown, who always get invited to shows in other places, and who seem to have always been in the spotlight. If an artist comes to town anywhere without knowing anyone, they find that as much as they try, no one even wants to see what they’re doing. And perhaps they’ll be in a bar one day, and a newcomer from Los Angeles, that no one has ever heard of, suddenly has a show in the town’s museum. They’ve gone from zero to number one in an instant, leaving observers baffled as to how they did it. Frustrated, other artists conclude that there’s some kind of organized effort to promote certain people, and not others.
Andrew Wielawski on 12.19.05 @ 10:37 AM EST [more..]
Friday, December 16th
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
 Tom Wolf was only a little off in suggesting in his famous book “The Painted Word” that painting would become an illustration to the text on the wall explaining what it meant. In fact by the mid 80’sThe text on the wall had often become the work itself. In fact painting (or sculpture- remember Robert Indiana’s famous sculpture of the word “LOVE” of the 60‘s?) has disappeared altogether in some instances as artists take their cues from art magazines and art professors who were not trained to draw or paint or sculpt themselves who had developed ways to circumvent those traditional disciplines. It has become a laughable joke inside some artist circles. The problem is that art as text, at least a large amount of it, is neither very visual nor verbally very elegant in any significant way. Most of it is cliché with little depth, open ended platitude and innuendo fit for any occasion or circumstance, the Hallmark Greeting Card of the art world in many cases. It often does with words what painters and sculptors are accused of doing with images in that it is little more than free floating word association. Some of it reminds me of those old books of quotes that can be so inspiring to a young mind beginning to grapple with the world of ideas. Some simply reeks of propaganda.
Walter King on 12.16.05 @ 07:57 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, December 14th
The Long Way Home
 I walk down to the central bus-station, rain or shine, on the way I let myself be tempted into ordering a sandwich and a strong portuguese coffee – uma bica – at the busy café, swarming with people on their way to work, while I wait for the bus to take me in the direction they have come from. I purposefully leave the house half an hour earlier to have an excuse for this temptation. The bus takes twenty minutes getting me to the small gathering of rustic houses that makes up the village of Charneca from where it’s another ten-minute walk down to the studio, which, at this time, though not quite so early in the morning, still hasn’t felt the rays of the sun. In the winter months I must look like the Michelin man to those who stop to look at the gardens from the road above, so many are the layers of trousers and jumpers I put on to keep me warm until I’m bold enough to remove them as painting becomes more energetic and makes me forgetful of such things. The walks – the one along the coastline before the bus and the one amidst the hills down to the studio after the bus – are invigorating, and the ride soothes my mind as I let go of the conditioning of everydayness and hand over control to the driver and to mother-earth and her different sense of rhythm. When I get off the bus I’m in a different world, a world I only truly reach when I get there by bus…
Jose Freitas Cruz on 12.14.05 @ 12:28 PM EST [more..]
Monday, December 12th
YOU'RE A SELL-OUT!
It's a phrase that gets thrown around alot by people whose motives may not
be so pure.
"You're a Sell-Out!"
Recently, I wrote about Art Basel Miami Beach 2005. I mentioned how I
thought the stench of money influenced practically everything I witnessed.
Now, it's time for the other side of the coin.
I think that some people, sometimes, I'm afraid to say, artists, whom I love
dearly, aren't fully aware of what it takes to keep something of the
magnitude of Art Basel Miami Beach in operation. It costs money. BIG
MONEY. Organizers of art events like these don't just snap their fingers
and like magic, it all happens. Poof!
Michael Corbin on 12.12.05 @ 08:48 AM EST [more..]
Friday, December 9th
Literary and Art Book is a worthwhile venue for artist Exhibitions
Art Expos of all types, and no matter where they are held, while seeming to benefit artists with displays of works, have in reality become the latest tool for individual art dealers and large corporate collectors to "TRADE" in the vast stores of printed matter in which they are so heavily invested over the last 40 or so years and which fill their store rooms and look alike galleries throughout the world.
There is no excitement for the artists in any of this as the work was sold so long ago by dealers to dealers to collectors and patrons and back to dealers again and there is no money available anywhere for any artist.
Hyacinthe Baron on 12.09.05 @ 09:09 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, December 7th
THE CHINA SYNDROME – Counterfeit Art Creates Problems
I recently read 80% of the goods found in a typical Wal-Mart store are made in China. Whether the figure is accurate or not, it would surprise few consumers these days to read it. China has become the manufacturing floor for the world. Could there be a more telling event than venerable Big Blue, i.e., IBM, announcing earlier this year the sale of its Personal Computing Division to Lenovo Group Limited, a Chinese company?
The Chinese manufacturing skill has now risen to make them formidable in highly technical areas such as computers and chip sets. Even Nikon has cameras manufactured in China. In the art and picture framing business in recent years, Asian manufacturers have had a profound effect on moulding distributors and picture framing equipment manufacturers.
Barney Davey on 12.07.05 @ 08:04 AM EST [more..]
Monday, December 5th
THE SUPERBOWL OF ART
(MIAMI BEACH) - The arena is set, the players are in place and the
spectators are speculating.
It's the pinnacle event for the National Football League. Cream of the crop
teams going head to head. The stakes are always very high.
For Art Basel Miami Beach 2005, it's the same game, different turf. Long
before I marched into the Miami Beach Convention Center for this euphoric
event, I decided that I was really going to be very alert and soak it all
up. I would be a sponge ... a fly on the wall ... a fly on a sponge?
Michael Corbin on 12.05.05 @ 08:05 AM EST [more..]
Friday, December 2nd
Revival of the Art Poster...
 The art poster is dead.
The director of the Hans Christian Andersen Festival Plays, said to me.
Too bad.
I am a poster designer.
It is a fact that the art poster is dead when it comes to advertising.
Only major cultural events still use posters for advertising.
Other media have ousted the poster as an advertising media.
Publishing posters traditionally is very complicated.
First you choose a relevant art work.
Then you prepare it for print.
Then you print it.
To decide edition sizes concerning posters is the hard part.
Then you distribute the poster.
Preparing, printing and distribution are costly.
Nearly nothing is left for the artist.
Print on demand is the answer.
You can work with print on demand in at least 3 ways.
Asbjorn Lonvig on 12.02.05 @ 04:00 AM EST [more..]
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